Post by Admin on Feb 21, 2019 16:17:16 GMT -5
Tom Davis is founder of Interfaith Veterans Workgroup: Helping Veterans Come Home and is heavily involved in Delaware community activism with a focus on helping veterans. He shared a poem to the Workgroup which he recently wrote after a personal meditation session. I thought this most apt for this site, and thank Tom for allowing us to post it here:
Two days ago I got an idea while resting after a Power Breath home practice. The idea was that the sitting involved in meditation is the obverse of sitting in a foxhole, waiting for the enemy. So today, with a snowstorm outside and nothing to do, I worked the idea into a poem. TC Davis
He sits in the hole he’s dug,
eyes peering just above its rim and down the barrel of his M-16.
If the enemy comes this night he, the one at the listening post way outside the wire, will hear them first.
He must stay alert for the slightest sound or movement.
Trigger off safety and finger laid straight beside the guard, he is ready.
Every muscle tense, his breathing shallow and fast, his heart pounding with dread and excitement, he is ready. . . .
If an enemy shows he will try to keep absolutely still until he can bare it no more,
then squeeze the radio handset twice to warn his buddies behind.
Or he might have to fire and flee. He will not be taken.
Eyes and ears straining to see something in the murk, to hear something in the silence,
he must hold the string of his bow drawn tight, or let the arrow fly.
Many, many, moons later he knows not how to come in from the listening post, how to let the drawn bow relax.
But at last, the warrior sits now in silence, legs crossed, eyes closed
At a listening post he’s made with a cushion and candle, a safe place to let his drawn bow relax.
Here there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, and his breathing is deep and slow.
Once he strained in the murk to make out the enemy.
Now, with eyes closed, he delves with his mind and heart into nothingness, and finds peace.
– TCDavis
Feb. 2019
The Listening Post
He sits in the hole he’s dug,
eyes peering just above its rim and down the barrel of his M-16.
If the enemy comes this night he, the one at the listening post way outside the wire, will hear them first.
He must stay alert for the slightest sound or movement.
Trigger off safety and finger laid straight beside the guard, he is ready.
Every muscle tense, his breathing shallow and fast, his heart pounding with dread and excitement, he is ready. . . .
If an enemy shows he will try to keep absolutely still until he can bare it no more,
then squeeze the radio handset twice to warn his buddies behind.
Or he might have to fire and flee. He will not be taken.
Eyes and ears straining to see something in the murk, to hear something in the silence,
he must hold the string of his bow drawn tight, or let the arrow fly.
Many, many, moons later he knows not how to come in from the listening post, how to let the drawn bow relax.
But at last, the warrior sits now in silence, legs crossed, eyes closed
At a listening post he’s made with a cushion and candle, a safe place to let his drawn bow relax.
Here there is nothing to see, nothing to hear, and his breathing is deep and slow.
Once he strained in the murk to make out the enemy.
Now, with eyes closed, he delves with his mind and heart into nothingness, and finds peace.
– TCDavis
Feb. 2019